Vin Scully - 9/13/09

Went to the game and saw the Dodgers get their little behinds beat….bad. At one point I said to my wife, “wow, what an exiting game…” not.  It was fun being there…but not so fun being killed.

Let’s just say Chad Billingsley is not ready for the playoffs.  I talked to another fan who felt that he hasn’t been the same since the All-Star game.  I would agree.  Something is off.  The thing I noticed today wasn’t that he was wild – it was that they were crushing his pitches.  I don’t know if it was his velocity down, or that they knew what was coming, but those balls were just flying off the bats.  Jon Weisman thinks he’s been worked to hard this year (click here).

Weaver and Belisario didn’t seem much better.  Weaver got hit from the first pitch and Belisario just kept bringing them in.

Here were the real highlights of the day, since the Dodgers didn’t bring too many.

• Even in the parking lot at the train station I had a fan stop, roll down his window and “boo” at me in my Dodger gear.  Got to love living up here.
• We had really nice seats in the club level and still had a lot of Dodger fans around.  There were over 40k people at the game, but the blue was out.  As you can see in the above picture, we were really close to Vin Scully too, which was very fun.
• Russell Martin has figured something out.  He hit 2 homeruns over the weekend, and even when he got out today, he was hitting the ball well.  Not sure what happened, but here’s hoping he has a good September.  He seems to have gotten his grove back.
• There was a pretty funny situation near the end of the game.  They put up the Padres/Rockies score and that the Padres had won.  It was funny because both sets of fans started cheering.  Both the Dodgers and Giants want to see the Rockies lose, so it was funny to finally have something that both sides could cheer about.
• Special thanks to Dave and Kevin on the train ride home.  You guys are the epitome of good Giants fans.  You were great to talk to, up on your sports, and had lots of good things to say about the Dodgers, with just enough taunting too.  If we’re ever at a game again together, I’ll gladly buy you both a beer.

Well – there goes the series.  Time to play the Pirates briefly, then more Giants.  I’m glad we took 2 of 3, I just wish we could have finished strong today.

Funny Scoreboard

Finally, here’s a fun game to end the post.  Can you find what’s wrong with the picture here?  Let’s just say the scoreboard was having some technical difficulties at one point in the game.  It’s a little small, but hopefully you can see what happened.  Post your thoughts below.

Furcal - Giants Game 4-27-09

So I’m not sure what happens to the Dodgers in SF, but the last two games I’ve been to up here have been full of Dodger errors. You’d never know it by the box score, but there should have been 4 Dodger errors that weren’t scored. Ethier bumped into Kemp in the 1st inning. Kemp misplayed a ball over his head. Belisario tried to be Omar Vizquel and flip the ball to Martin with his glove, and then also uncorked a wild pitch.

The batting was decent and Wolf did ok, but they didn’t look sharp tonight.  I’ve actually never been to a game with that few of people in the stands.  It wasn’t a surprise that they had discounts on the tickets. 

Barry Zito actually pitched a really good game tonight.  He definitely had the Dodgers guessing.  They started letting Pablo Sandoval catch him and ever since he can pitch again.  If you have a fantasy team – keep an eye on him.  He definitely looked like the Zito of old.

The funniest story of the night was who I ended up sitting next to.  There was a guy with a shirt that said “Osama Bin Laden is a Dodgerfan” with a picture of the LA logo on Bin Laden’s turbin.  It was pretty funny and it ends up the guy is setting up a blog for die hard Giants fans just like I set this one up for Dodger fans here in SF.  I had my cards with the logo on it, and he had his stickers with his website, www.dodgerhater.net .  Two like minded fans…just different teams.  Good luck to you Sean.

I don’t know what it is with these teams, but the rivalry is real and it plays out in the games.  They are always close.  One Giants fan behind me summed it up well, “Watching this game is emotionally exhausting.”  It was.  It was fun to be there tonight…just tough to swallow the ending.

Oh yeah – man I love Casey Blake.  The guy just hits jacks.